Conventional user interfaces for selecting formatting of objects on a page within an electronic document can be rather complex and not user-friendly. Often, the user interfaces for selecting formatting on a page in an electronic document can include drop-down menus or dialog boxes for various options such as for changing fonts, managing outlines, and adding bulleting or numbering. The dialog boxes are typically designed such that they may include a preview window to display formatting examples prior to applying such formatting to the objects on the page of the electronic document where the formatting that is selected is usually performed by adjusting a collection of settings independent of the object being formatted.
The preview window in the conventional user interfaces is usually very small relative to an entire page in an electronic document. Also, small objects are usually provided in the window as the basis for the preview. For example, for text based objects, a short sentence could form the entire preview for any selected text formatting. Therefore, decisions regarding text formatting must be made on the basis of a sentence of text. But a single sentence of text in one font may look or provide a feel that is entirely different than a paragraph or a page of text with the same font.
In addition to the preview formatting problems of conventional technology, conventional word processing technology does not provide an easy way to track distinct formatting for supporting multiple languages on a form or fixed document. Companies often have offices located in different countries, yet a company may desire to keep the look and feel of their documents uniform. For example, for internal corporate memos, a company may desire to have all offices use the same memo header. However, this same memo header may not be supported in other languages because of the font that is selected for the form or template. As a result, multinational corporations need to create several different templates that are specific to languages of particular offices.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art to simplify the management of forms or templates that can handle multiple languages and fonts. Another need exists in the art to reduce or substantially eliminate forms that are specific to single languages and corresponding fonts.
Another need exists in the art for more efficient management of the formatting of pages in a document. A need exists for a user interface for formatting documents that is easy to use and that can be easily accessed by a user.